If Richard Marks has his way, someday in the not-too-distant future virtual three-dimensional men will wage war on coffee tables in homes across the world. These men will be small enough that, for them, tabletops will be expansive battlefields.

Such a vision may seem like a fantasy out of "Star Wars," where Wookies play virtual monster-chess with R2D2. But Dr. Marks, the special-projects manager in the research and development wing of Sony Computer Entertainment of America — Sony's U.S. PlayStation division — can see it happening.

"It's totally doable," Marks said. The key is the EyeToy, a special camera designed for the PlayStation 2 and invented by Marks that makes its redesigned return this week.

For the coffee-table idea, forget about PS2 for a moment and think of Sony's hot new handheld, the PSP. Picture attaching a camera atop the system and pointing it in the opposite direction of the screen, so that looking at a screen is like looking through a window to the world beyond the system. But this window can contain the extra ingredient of video game graphics, making the virtual seem like it's interacting with the real. "You could have a virtual guy run around on the table," Marks said. "And your friend could do that with his PSP. They could fight. And you could walk around the table and see this fight going on while controlling it with the thumb-stick."

The PSP EyeToy isn't a reality yet, but two years since the release of the original EyeToy for PS2, Marks has enraptured audiences with his vision for camera-based gaming. He's shown that an EyeToy attached to the PS2 can track the player's use of a real-world baton, turning that baton into an onscreen magic wand that sparkles and glows when moved in a particular pattern. At Sony's PlayStation 3 unveiling at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, he briefly took the stage to show how waving and tilting cups in front of an EyeToy could allow him to scoop and dump the virtual water of a bathtub rendered on TV by a PS3.

For now, players will have to take the baby steps to Marks' elevated dreams. The first step came in 2003 with the release of "EyeToy Play," a suite of mini-games that, for the most part, used the camera to broadcast the player's image into their TV and tracked their movement, enabling them to swat at onscreen opponents or juggle a virtual soccer ball with their head. In 2004 came the dance-oriented "EyeToy Groove" and a futuristic hover-boarding game called "EyeToy Anti-Grav" that didn't depict the player onscreen, but tracked hand and head movement in order to control the character racing on the TV.

This week sees the U.S. release of a remodeled "EyeToy," functionally the same as the first but smaller. It comes packaged with "EyeToy Play 2," which includes deeper games than its predecessor. Players still see themselves onscreen, but now a challenge may cast them as a short-order cook. As a cook they will have to grab ingredients from the perimeter of the screen (midair in real life) and pull them to the counter in order to make sandwiches. They'll have to shake milkshakes (again, just moving one's hands in midair), chop food with a cleaver, swat flies and engage in a cook-off with a virtual chef. Other games involve operating power-tools, popping bubbles and playing ping-pong or boxing against cartoon characters.

"It's the closest thing we've got to virtual reality," said Joe Brisbois, producer of "Play 2." Brisbois has been involved in Sony's EyeToy games since early 2004. It's made him an advocate of gaming that involves moving more than just your fingers. "In the past it was all about figuring out button combos, but with physical gaming we can tap into what you are doing with your body. It sort of becomes like a sport."

The idea that home video games can get people off their couch has been popularized in recent years by Konami's "Dance Dance Revolution," which kept players active with a plugged-in dance mat. It's become a cultural phenomenon in the U.S. in a way that "EyeToy" hasn't yet. Sales of the first and best-selling EyeToy game, the first "Play," were solid in the U.S., with more than 690,000 sold in the last two years, according to NPD, an industry research group. But that number falls far short of multimillion blockbusters like "Grand Theft Auto" and "Madden," or even more modest hits like "Ratchet & Clank."

While popular in Europe, what will it take for the camera to captivate more gamers here? "Play 2" reveals a development team percolating with ideas. A mode called "Playroom" showcases some experimental technology demonstrations. One allows users to tie the control of onscreen elements to the movement of different-colored objects in the real world. Instead of game controllers, a multiplayer game could be controlled with a banana and an apple. Another uses the "EyeToy"'s built-in microphone to let players control a submarine's movement by changing the pitch of their voice. A mode called "EyeToy Cameo" takes three snapshots of a player's head and turns it into a 3D model. And then there's "SpyToy," which allows the EyeToy to surreptitiously take photos of anyone who walks by a seemingly powered-down system. Users can also record a video message that will play when interlopers trip the device.

After "Play 2," the EyeToy brain trust is hoping to successfully join the gaming workout trend with the personal-training "EyeToy Kinetic," set for release in September. Also coming this year is "EyeToy Chat," which will allow video messaging between networked PS2s.